Cue World's Tiniest Violin

[masterofmidgets]

Could today have been any more of a Monday? Seriously, universe, you don't need to try this hard!

*is dead*

I was up way late AND way early, trying to get my second CS assignment in on time (I did not succeed). I got very frustrated with my professor because one of the problems told us we had to use a method that a) he never explained, and b) wasn't in the book. WTF? On the other hand. My roommate noticed how stressed I was and made a suggestion that, after some talk with telyanofcelore , I decided to go through on: I switched my CS class to credit/no credit instead of being for a grade. I mean, it's not a class I need. I already earned my engineering GER from 105 last quarter, and this isn't even tangentially related to my major. It's just a class I'm taking because I kind of enjoy programming, because I thought it would be useful in the future to have at least a basic understanding of it, and because I want to make sure the math/science/analytic thinky parts of my brain don't get all withered and dead-ish while I'm writing papers about imperial sysmbolism in 19th century lit. Basically, I wanted this to be a challenging but still fun class, and it's just stressing me out way too much already. Hopefully this will take some of the weight off, so I can get back to stressing about classes that actually have to do with my degree!

Fiction class was...intense.

I'll lay this out here: I'm not comfortable talking about myself to people. Those of you who have met me in real life are laughing now, I'm sure, because I'm always telling crazy stories about my family and stuff. But it's true. What it is - I talked for quite a while with my mom about this today - is that I only share things about myself when I feel very much in control of how I'm sharing it. That's one of the reasons I tell so many stories about my family (also because they are fucking funny) - it puts things on my terms. If I present things as a joke, if I can make you laugh, then I know that you are seeing things the way I want you to.

I don't like looking weak in front of other people. I hate crying in public. I'd rather you be pissed off at me than feel sorry for me. I just can't deal with that. So I deflect with humor. I turn everything into a joke. You aren't allowed to feel sorry for me because I don't feel sorry for me.

So with a story like the one I wrote this weekend, I'm in a very uncomfortable place. I can't make this funny. I can't laugh it off. Who I am, whether or not that is a good thing, is on display in that story, and just reading it, knowing anyone who reads it will know a part of me in a way that I cannot control, makes me feel really exposed and vulnerable. It's scary.

But I still got up in class today and read that story to a roomful of students, and I'm glad I did. But damn, I was fucking drained after I got out of class.

Bright side: my teacher praised my story pretty strongly. She said it had great pacing and a really strong voice. And I'm pretty satisfied with it, too, which doesn't happen that often for me. It was a good piece of writing, if very, very painful.

To make up for it, I wrote this during our beginning of class free write. It is not a visceral, deeply personal piece of writing. But it does have a stripper cake!




"Explain," Max says steelily, arms crossed over his chest, while Ted and Booster squirm in front of him.

"Well," Ted begins. "We were going to do something nice for Guy, since it's his birthday and all - "

"Not that he'd tell us, we had to blackmail it out of Ice," Booster interrupts.

"Right, right. So we got Ice to tell us when it was. And we ordered a cake for him."

"We ordered a cake full of strippers. Because it's Guy."

"Stop interrupting, I'm telling the story! The cake was full of strippers. It was a big cake. Taller than Booster. And the strippers were going to jump out and give him a lap dance."

"But somebody called the evil cakeshop."

"For the last time, I did not call the evil cakeshop! There is no evil cakeshop! Our cake was intercepted."

"And filled with supervillains dressed as strippers."

"And filled with supervillains dressed as strippers, yes. And instead of giving Guy a lap dance, they jumped out with semi-automatics and tried to kill us."

"But we stopped them! Very heroically, I might add."

"We just miscalculated a little. We didn't mean to set the cake on fire! It could have happened to anyone!"

"The water was a bad idea though. We didn't think the room would flood like that. You should really invest in a sprinkler system, Max."